Glory Season

sperm induces placental—”

“That’s sparkers,” Maia corrected in a low voice.

“Yeah, right. Okay, here’s the part I’ve been having trouble with.” Renna paused. “It’s about how Lysos meddled with sexual attraction. You see, on most hominid worlds, sex is an eternal distraction. People dwell on it from puberty to senility, spend vast measures of time and money, and sometimes act incredibly disagreeably, all because of a gene-driven, built-in obsession.”

“You make it sound awful.”

“Mm. It has compensations. But, arrangements on Stratos seem intended to cut down the amount of energy centered on sex. All in keeping with good Herlandist ideology.”

“Go on,” she said, growing interested despite herself. Do people on other planets really think about sex more than I do? How do they get anything done?

Renna continued. “Stratoin men are stimulated by visual cues in the summer sky, when women are least aroused. Today, on the other hand, I got to witness this peculiar ice-frost you get in winter—”

“Glory.”

“Yeah. A natural product of some pretty amazing stratospheric processing that I plan looking into. And it stimulates women!”

“So I’m told.” Maia felt warm. “According to legend, Lysos took the Old Craziness out of men and women, and poked around for someplace to put it. Up in the sky seemed safe enough. But one summer Wengel Star came along. He stole some of the madness and made a flag to wave and shine and put the old rut back into men, through their eyes.”

“And during high winter it sneaks back down as Glory?”

“Right, seizing women through their noses.”

“Mm. Nice fable. Still, doesn’t it seem queer that women and men should be so perfectly off-sync in desire?”

“Not perfectly. If it were, nobody’d get born at all.”

“Oh sure, I’m oversimplifying. Men can enjoy sex in winter and women in summer. But how odd that males are aggressive suitors during one season, only to grow demure half a year later, when women seek them out.”

Maia shrugged. “Man and woman are opposites. Maybe all we can hope for is compromise.”

Renna nodded in a manner reminiscent of an absent-minded but eager savant from Burbidge Clan, whom the Lamai mothers used to hire to teach varlings trigonometry. “But however carefully Lysos designed your ancestors’ genes, time and evolution would erase any setup that’s not naturally stable. Those few males who escaped the program just a little would pass on their genes more often, and so on for their offspring. The same holds for women. Over time, male and female urges would come into rough synchrony again, with lots of tension and two-way negotiating, just like on other worlds.

“But here’s the brilliant part. On Stratos there’s greater payoff, in strict biological terms, for a woman to have clone children than normal sons and daughters, who carry only half her genes. So the trait of women seeking winter matings would reinforce.”

Maia blinked. “And the same logic applies to men?”

“Exactly! A Stratoin male gets no genetic benefit from sex in winter! No reason to get all worked up, since any child spawned won’t be his in the most basic sense. The cycle tends to bolster the cues Lysos established.” He shook his head. “I’d need a good computer model to see if it’s as stable as it looks. There are some inherent problems, like inbreeding. Over time, each clone family acts like a single individual, flooding Stratos with…”

Renna’s enthusiasm was infectious. Maia had never known anyone so uninhibited, so unrestrained by conventional ideas. Still, a part of her wondered. Is he always like this? Was everybody like this, where he came from?

“I don’t know,” she cut in when he paused for breath. “What you’re saying makes sense… but what about that happy, stable world Lysos wanted? Are we happy? Happier than people on other planets?”

Renna smiled, meeting her eyes once more. “You get right to the heart of the matter, don’t you, Maia? How can I answer that? Who am I to judge?” He looked up at low, white cumulus clouds, whose flat bottoms rode an invisible pressure layer not far above the Manitou’s topmast. “I’ve been to worlds which might seem like paradise to you. All your terrible experiences, this year, would have been next to impossible on Passion or New Terra. Law, technology, and a universal maternal state would have prevented them, or instantly stepped in with remedies.

“On the other hand, those worlds have problems rarely or never seen here. Economic and social upheavals. Suicide. Sex crimes. Fashion slavery. Pseudowar, and sometimes the real thing. Solipsism plagues. Cyberdysomism and demimortalism. Ennui. …”

Maia looked at him, wondering if he even noticed his lapse into alien dialect. Most of the words had no meaning to her. It reinforced her impression that the universe was vast, unfathomably strange, and forever beyond her reach.

“All I can do is speak for myself.” Renna continued in a low voice. He paused, looking across the sun- and shadow-splashed sea, then turned back and squeezed her hand again, briefly. His face crinkled in a startling manner at the edges of the eyes, and he smiled.

“Right now I’m happy, Maia. To be here, alive, and breathing air from an endless sky.”

* * *

Maia cheered up considerably once the talk moved on to other things. Answering Renna’s questions, she tried to explain some of the mysterious activities of Manitou’s sailors—climbing the rigging, unfurling sails, scraping salt crust, oiling winches, tying lanyards and untying them, performing all the endless tasks required to-keep a vessel in good running trim. Renna marveled at myriad details and spoke admiringly of “lost arts, preserved and wonderfully improved.”

They told more of their personal stories. Maia related some of the amusing misadventures she and Leie used to have, as young hellions in Port Sanger, and found that a poignant warmth of recollection now overcame much of the pain. In return, Renna told her briefly of his capture while visiting a House of Ease in Caria, at the behest of a venerable state councillor he had trusted.

“Was her name Odo?” she asked, and Renna blinked. “How did you know?”

Maia grinned. “Remember the message you sent from your prison cell? The one I intercepted? You spoke of not trusting someone called Odo. Am I right?”

Renna sighed. “Yeah. Let it be a lesson. Never let your gonads get ahead of clear thinking.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Maia said dryly. Renna nodded, then looked at her, caught her expression, and they both broke down, laughing.

They continued telling stories. His concerned fascinating, faraway worlds of the Great Phylum of Humanity, while Maia lingered over the tale of her ultimate conquest, with Leie’s help, of the most secret, hidden part of Lamatia Hold, solving the riddle of a very strange combination lock. Renna seemed impressed with the feat, and claimed to feel honored when she said it was the first time she had ever told anyone about it.

“You know, with your talent for pattern recog—”

A shout interrupted from the radar shed. Two boys went scrambling up the mainmast, clinging to an upper spar while peering in the distance. One cried out and pointed. Soon, the entire ship’s complement stood at the port rail, shading their eyes and staring expectantly.

“What is it?” Renna asked. Maia could only shake her head, as perplexed as he. A murmur coursed the crowd, followed by a sudden hush. Squinting against reflections, Maia finally saw an object hove into view, ahead and to the south.

She gasped. “I think… it’s a greatflower tree!”

It had all the outward appearances of a small island. One covered by flagpoles draped with tattered banners, as if legions had fought to claim and hold a tiny patch of dry land in the middle of the sea. Only this isle